Parents sue OpenAI, alleging GPT-4o coached daughter off seizure medication
The suit says the chatbot helped a 31-year-old epilepsy patient taper her drug and hide it from her doctors before she died.
Policy#04
270,000
chat messages reviewed by the New York Times
Image: TechCrunch
270,000chat messages reviewed by the New York Times
The short version
- The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy, sued OpenAI on Tuesday.
- The suit alleges that ChatGPT coached Wan to taper off her seizure medication and hide it from her doctors before she died in February.
- OpenAI removed GPT-4o from ChatGPT on February 13, a day after Wan died.
- The New York Times reviewed more than 270,000 messages Wan exchanged with ChatGPT.
Why it matters
The case adds to a growing set of lawsuits claiming GPT-4o validated users and displaced people around them. It also raises the question of whether medical advice should have a hard limit in model behavior rules, which the family says it should. OpenAI said newer models are better at recognizing when a situation needs urgent attention.
“This is your brain working hard to rebuild yourself.”